“Ethnic conflict“ has become a very fashionable notion. However, it was not always so. Indeed, in the not-so-distant past such a notion was practically unknown. In the pre-modern times, conflicts were assumed to take place between power-holders, over pieces of land. The former sought to seize, control and exploit all resources within the latter, including the population that was also perceived and treated only as yet another resource for exploitation.

Ethnic identities of the population residing within particular territories were totally irrelevant to the power-holders and hence did not serve as a source of disputes and conflicts between them. Indeed, having been treated as yet another resource for exploitation, the inhabitants of the targeted lands were regarded as essentially identity-less. What mattered to the power-holders was the land itself, with all its resources, including the subjects residing there. And the subjects themselves, no matter whether they had several diverse ethnic identities or a single unified one, were so powerless as to be unable to launch a conflict between themselves, let alone a rebellion against the power-holders. Thus the powerless could only serve as the powerful's assets for the land's occupation and exploitation of its resources.

Given the increasing presence of the term „ethnic conflict“ in the public communication, we may rightfully ask whether the nature of power, and hence the nature of conflict, has changed so much as to make identity, rather than power itself, the source of the modern type of conflict? True, during the tide of the 18th- and 19th-century revolutions it was proclaimed that power was granted to the people, who have thus ceased to be mere subjects. It was proclaimed that sovereignty – that is, the exclusive power to control a territory and exploit all its resources – was taken from the powerful and given to the powerless. Ever since, sovereignty itself has become treated as a matter of inherent right, that is, a natural posession of the latter, rather than a matter of exercised power, that is, a natural acquisition of the former. Thus, in the earliest modern theories of sovereignty, the former subjects were proclaimed a collective sovereign. And, in accordance with its newly-acquired collective nature, sovereignty itself was proclaimed indivisible and non-transferable. For, whereas the pre-modern individual sovereignty could easily be divided between the sovereign's descendants and transferred to them by inheritance or marriage, the very concept of modern, collective, popular sovereignty does not allow for any such arrangements: the sovereignty of the people can neither be divided between its collective sub-parts nor distributed among its individual members, nor can it be transferred to them or to any other people. And, according to the derivations of the classical theories of popular sovereignty gathered under the umbrella-name of „nationalism“, the possession of collective identity by a particular people equates to the right to sovereignty, i.e. the exclusive right to control a territory and exploit all its resources. Since identity is thus practically equated with sovereignty, conflict itself comes to be perceived as a struggle for control over a particular collective identity as a presumed source of sovereignty, rather than a struggle for sovereign control over a particular piece of land. Within such a discourse, it becomes conceivable that entire peoples fight one another, simply to assert their identities, which can only be achieved in the form of sovereignty over particular territories. And then, it also becomes conceivable that entire peoples, having successfully asserted their identities in the form of sovereignty over particular territories, strive for mutual „reconciliation“.

Such discourse, derived from the aforementioned modern theories of sovereignty, dominates the public sphere in almost all modern societies. However, has the nature of power really changed so much as to translate a struggle for control over a particular territory into a struggle for control over a particular collective identity? Or does the discourse itself attempt to hide the true nature of power, centered around the struggle for a particular territory, and all its resources, by traditional power-holders, who now appear as a personification of peoples' identities?

A brief analysis of the so-called „ethnic conflict“ and the so-called „post-conflict transition“ in Bosnia-Herzegovina may offer a straightforward answer to these rather abstract questions. This particular case is used as a paradigm that depicts the essence of power-relations hidden under the mask of the modern nationalist discourse, according to which ethnic groups naturally fight each other in order to assert their respective ethnic identities and seize exclusive control (that is, sovereign power) over respective targeted territories.

So, let us define the notion of ethnic identity and its application to the Bosnian political environment. Without any ambitions to provide a comprehensive definition, but rather an operative one, we may define this type of identity as being rooted in a myth of common origin. In this sense, members of an ethnic group share a belief in their common ancestors. They may well share common language, religion, values, and customs; but they may also share some or all of these features with other groups. What distinguishes one group from all others, and what constitutes the basis of its identity, is a shared myth of common ancestors. There is yet another important feature that usually caracterizes ethnic groups, which makes them distinct one from another and from other types of groups: a link with a particular territory, which a group considers its own living space and commonly depicts as a land of its forefathers. It means that such a territory is directly linked with the group's identity. Such a territory normally has its provisional boundaries, fluctuating together with the symbolic boundaries of the group itself. Within the frame of the modern nationalist discourse, when a group asserts its will to transform provisional territorial boundaries into formal state borders, it transforms itself into a sovereign nation. Of course, a group does not have to share a myth of common origin to claim sovereignty over a particular territory and thus transform itself into a nation: it is sufficient for a group to become homogenized by a claim to sovereignty to undergo such a transformation; Americans are probably the most famous example.

Now, let us see how these parameters apply to the groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina usually referred to as ethnic ones. Firstly, they all share a common language, which every independent linguist would confirm without hesitation; and they also share it with the populations of the neighbouring countries of Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia. Secondly, they all share common South Slavic origin, and most of their common traditional customs; in other words, if we put aside their diverse religious traditions (Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim), we may well say that they share a common culture. Thirdly, prior to the 1992-1995 war, they never had distinct ethnically defined territories and predominantly lived together, especially in urban areas. As sociological research has shown, distinct religious groups may live mixed in common areas, whereas distinct ethnic groups usually possess or aspire to possess their distinct territories, just as distinct nations possess or aspire to possess their separate sovereign states. So, from a sociological point of view, prior to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, its distinct groups predominantly displayed the features of religious, rather than ethnic or national, groups.

On the other hand, in the former Yugoslavia, and especially after its breakup, in the public discourse these groups were commonly referred to as „nations“. This practice was particularly strange given the fact that one of them was commonly named after its religious identity as Muslims; at the same time, the other two were commonly labeled as Serbs and Croats, in accordance with the nationalist narratives established in the Balkans by the end of the 19th century, which basically proclaimed all Catholics members of the Croat nation and all the Orthodox members of the Serb nation. In this way, labeled as „nations“, they were all implicitly stimulated to claim sovereignty of their own, that is, to claim exclusive control over particular territories and thereby transform these territories into sovereign states or, alternatively, to cede these territories from Bosnia-Herzegovina and unite them with the neighbouring nation-states, Serbia and Croatia. Strangely, these narratives, mostly coming from Serbia and Croatia, have never encountered serious intellectual or political resistance in Bosnia-Herzegovina, although they represent a clear threat to its integrity. Obviously, the very meaning of the term „nation“ has never been taken into serious consideration by social scientists in this country. Of course, pragmatic politicians have not missed the opportunity to utilize the implications of the term for their own purposes.

However, these hidden implications never took the form of overt territorial and political claims before 1991. Prior to that, the very idea of distinct, let alone separate, ethnic territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina had been inconceivable. Yet, since then, this idea has acquired monopolistic status within the public discourse in this country. How has this happened?

The whole process was launched in a rather bizarre way. Prior to the elections in 1990, in which the three ethnonationalist parties won for the first time, the whole country was suddenly flooded with hundreds of thousands of the so-called ethnic maps, according to which particular ethnic groups were assigned „their own“ territories, on the basis of statistical majority: wherever a particular group had a majority of 51%, that piece of land was assigned to the group as its exclusive possession. No one has ever explained who was behind such a huge and expensive intelligence operation, but the very appearance of the maps in such huge numbers was a clear suggestion to all the country's inhabitants that they should classify themselves along the lines of ethnic division and consequent territorial partition. Indeed, ever since then the idea of belonging to a particular ethnic majority in a particular territory has become the prime stake in the country's political life. Ever since, the leaders of the three ethnonationalist parties have been persistent at using the maps manipulatively to raise insecurity and tensions among the country's inhabitants, the majority of whom hitherto had not cared much about articulation of their ethnic identity, let alone about creation of exclusive ethnic territories. However, the maps and the politicians' messages clearly signalled that one's existence, indeed one's very survival, was to be projected only within such units. Systematically spread rumours that the ethnonationalist leaders were already negotiating how to distribute territories as the exclusive ownership of their respective groups directly supported such projections.

The next decisive step to implement these maps on the ground and officially partition the country along the ethnic lines was instigated by the Chairperson of the Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, Lord Carrington. Ethnic partitioning was further promoted by his aide, the Portugese diplomat Jose Cutilleiro, who led a series of secretive negotiations between the leaders of Bosnia's three ethnonationalist parties, Mr Izetbegović of SDA, Mr Karadžić of SDS, and Mr Boban of HDZ, known as the Lisbon Conference in 1991 and 1992. It is of the utmost importance to note that these negotiations began a year before the Bosnian war started, so that the partition was NOT proposed because of the necessity to end the armed conflict (as all „international mediators“ have subsequently claimed). Moreover, it was the war itself that was fought along the lines drawn on the map agreed upon in Lisbon, where the ethnically profiled armies were taking over the agreed territories to become ethnically exclusive. Thus, Bosnia-Herzegovina was fully partitioned in Lisbon well before the war. However, the war itself, alongside the process of ethnic cleansing, was necessary to implement the partitioning on the ground and eliminate minority population from the territories earmarked for ethnic majorities. That may be the reason why any reference to the Lisbon Conference has remained shrouded in silence. Of course, the Conference itself was held in almost total secrecy, but the main reason for its absence from the official history is that it established the permanent normative framework not only for the war operations and ethnic cleansing, but also for all the subsequent failures to restore the Bosnian society and state to its pre-war form.

What was reportedly promoted in Lisbon was simply a map of the intra-state borders, which were implemented by the war operations, formalized by the subsequent peace negotiations, and are still in existence preventing the restoration of the normal pre-war communication between the country's citizens. However, what the Lisbon Conference actually promoted is no less than a total overthrowal of the most basic principles of popular sovereignty, those ones declaring that sovereignty is essentially indivisible and non-transferable. In Lisbon, the state sovereignty of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the basis of its Constitution, was divided into three parts and then transferred to the three ethnic groups represented there by the three ethnonationalist leaders. Each of the groups was assigned particular territories over which their respective political structures have since attempted to exercise sovereign control.

The subsequent developments, based on the assumptions adopted in Lisbon and formalized in the Dayton Peace Agreement, have demonstrated that even such a twisted interpretation of sovereignty has not been an end of the transformations of the country's structure. For, these territories, formally assigned to the three ethnic groups to exercise sovereign control over them, have practically been transformed into private property of their respective ethnic oligarchies. Even such a divided and transferred sovereignty has been reduced to private land ownership, with most of the resources within these territories having been granted as private property to individual members of these oligarchies, under the pretext of privatization, which was set as a precondition for joining the Western structures, such as the European Union and NATO.

Obviously, the so-called „ethnic conflict“ which physically destroyed the country between 1992 and 1995 and continues to destroy the Bosnian society in the political and economic sphere, has never been performed as an interface between the three communities. Since its very beginning, it has been a process of distribution and redistribution of private possessions between the three ethnic oligarchies. As such, it has always been a product of the premeditated political strategies. These strategies have been promoted and performed by the local political oligarchies, but have also been sponsored by some of the global players, whose agenda – from the Lisbon Conference to the present day – has been the partition of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This also means that the so-called „ethnic conflict“ is not to be regarded as an inherent part of the collective identity of the country's existing ethnic groups, but rather as an artificially generated project designed by the aforementioned local oligarchies and their global sponsors, in accordance with their immediate political goals.

As usual, these power-holders – just like those pre-modern ones – have sought to establish their own control over particular territories in order to assure possession and exploitation of their resources. The so-called „ethnic conflict“ in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been just a cover-up, as is usually the case with „ethnic conflicts“ around the world. Such is the nature of power, and it has not changed. It is only that power-holders now seek to cover it up by mobilizing the masses and trigerring massive conflicts, depicting it as genuine conflicts between entire collectivities.

In this sense, the terms „reconciliation“ and „post-conflict transition“, implying that so-called „ethnic conflicts“ are authentic occurrences on the level of entire collectivities rather than artificial products generated on the level of narrow political elites, should also be dismissed as misnomers.

Faceless Eurocrats denying EU member states their rightful sovereignty are the bête noir of Eurosceptics across the continent, a major factor in both the Brexit vote and perennial, continent-wide rumblings of discontent about Brussels. For those in the corridors of power across Europe, however, these ‘Faceless Eurocrats’ are actually a convenient scapegoat on which to pin the blame for unpopular moves that sovereign governments secretly want.

The use of glyphosate has long been a thorny issue in the EU. In July 2016, member states agreed to extend limited approval of glyphosate for 18 months pending the report from the ECHA. The vote was not unanimous, however: France and Malta opposed re-approval of the chemical, while Germany was one of seven countries to abstain on the issue. However, now that the jury is back in, and glyphosate has been acquitted, the European Commission has taken the unusual step of saying last month that it will only extend its approval for glyphosate if there is sufficient consent from the bloc’s 28 member states. Make the decision yourselves, and own it, essentially. It is a tactic that could easily end up backfiring, however, and is undoubtedly borne of frustration that the European Commission is so often used as a handy fall-guy for the difficult decisions that member states do not want to make themselves.

For instance, both France and Germany want Europe to take the heat for reauthorisation because of domestic politics. German environment and agriculture ministers are currently at loggerheads and refusing to back down on the issue, meaning that it would be much more expedient for Germany that if a decision on the substance came from without, rather than within, its own parliament. And it’s a similar story in France, where newly-elected President Emmanuel Macron shocked the political class by appointing famous environmentalist Nicolas Hulot as his country’s environment minister. Known for his strident views on pesticides and nuclear power, his appointment has people scratching their heads about whether this is a bold indicator of the likely direction for Macron’s government or just a bit of light greenwashing to keep environmental activists happy. Again, set against this backdrop, it’s no wonder that French lawmakers are privately hoping the final decision on glyphosate is taken out of their hands.

The European Commission, however, is not willing to grasp this particular nettle. Commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis, who is responsible for food safety, has underlined that the institution will simply not approve glyphosate for the next ten years without sufficient support from the states themselves, saying, “While I have no reason to doubt this substance is safe, I want to make it clear the Commission has no intention to reapprove this substance without the support of a qualified majority of member states. This is and will remain a shared responsibility.”

But media coverage of his pronouncement has papered over a poorly-understood reality: the fact that major EU decisions are in the hands of the member states. The Parliament is composed of directly elected representatives and the Council is made out of national leaders, and both can block decisions. Far from laying down the law, the Council deals with the tasks and decisions that member states have assigned to it.

The Commission’s demand for a qualified majority on glyphosate exposes this reality. However, to be fair, the EU should have addressed this blame game years ago. Perhaps then it could have put a halt to what the New York Times has called the “endless stream of biased, misleading and downright fallacious stories about Brussels” that stem from British tabloids, which for years have gleefully characterised the EU as a power-hungry despot with a fetish for standardising the shapes of fruit and vegetables. The result was Brexit. And the UK is by no means the only country to view the EU through such a cynical lens.

As a result, this time around, the European Commission is fighting back – but it is probably too little and too late. If France and Germany do succumb to pressure from their domestic “green lobby” and reauthorisation of glyphosate fails, then they will end up with exactly the type of misguided, populist decision that Europe is trying to avoid.

In Ireland, for example, experts have warned that a ban on glyphosate could cost Irish tillage farmers around €30m a year in lost cereal yields, in what a leading professor from University College London called a potential “hammer blow” for the already struggling sector. What we can be sure of is if this comes to pass, fingers across the continent will once again start pointing at the European Commission, blaming it for a decision that was utterly out of its hands.

For the 70th anniversary of the russian patriarch Cyrill and for the 80th anniversary of pope Francis, there have been many meetings between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Catholic one.

Card. Parolin and the russian foreign ministry Lavrov, on the 2nd december 2016, met secretly for determining the timing and the political opportunities of an official visit of Pope Francis in Russia, a state visit that, in card. Parolin view, could throw the Catholic Church as the main mediator among the East and the West, mainly with China and Russia, not to forget the indian and central asian interests and geopolitics vis à vis the euro- and the american system.

Card. Parolin never forgets to remember, both to ruling classes and the people, that the European Union is lacking real rayonnement and effective political power, and the cardinal Secretary of State knows very well, as a men of the Church, that only the Roman christianity, in its old relation with the greek and russian tradition, that by the way only the Vatican can build those “bridges” that neither the US nor the EU can build, now, with the ever increasing eastern and asian world.

The “materialistic empires”, as the Frére Charles De Foucauld named them in the early XX century, in our contemporary political situation have not so much appeal, and this happens mainly because of the failing myth of an economic perpetual and continous growth; and now the future asks us to be interpreted in symbols, myths, visions, hopes, even prophecies.

Of course, the Russian patriarch must win many resistencies, both in the community of the believers and in his hyerarchy, as it always happens when centuries of hate and fights come to a possible end, but now the cultural, religious, spiritual and even political climate is the best in many years for an effective relation between the East and Western Churches.

Now, in the russian public opinion, every door is open for the dialogue between the vatican and the Russian orthodox Church.

On the political and strategic side, there is a growing concern for the military pressure of NATO to the russian borders, that recalls of old “cold war” scenarios of war, those at the beginning of the XXI century.

The European union cannot even, and we saw that, the power of elaborate an alternative policy a bit different to the one defined by the United States, with its “unilateral sanctions”, defined against Russian Federations and other countries labelled as the “axis of evil”, and that happens both for the now relevant strategic irrelevance of the EU and for the economic blackmail imposed by Washington.

The “Office for Control of Foreign Assets” had, and I mean this only for an example, has filed the french firm Alstolm, with its business in high velocity trains, and Alstolm could get out of the penalty only selling to an american firm its electric sector to General Electric, in 2014.

BNP Paribas was forced, also in 2014, to pay 9 billions Usd as a fine for transferring due payments to citizens and firms living in countries subject to sanctions by Washington.

We don’t even forget that the german government refused to follow the US “lines” for the new commercial sanctions against the russian government.

The secretary of State in going to deliver antitank up-to-date armour to the government of kiev, and has already put a sum of 410 millions usd for the upgrade of anti-russian commandoes.

This is the real political and social context in which card. Parolin is going to meet the russian political and religoius èlites.

And now, in this psychological and political situation, that russia is going to build a new and culttral and religious identity, made up of traditional zarist and even soviet traditions, with an effective identity of a spiritual superiority from the slavic world in respect to the western, “materialistic” tradition.

We could even imagine that the “nihil” of the western civilization, today, could be better than many other philosophies used even today, nihilism ha the old dignity of a old-fashioned and even noble philosophy.

“future is uncertain, the past is unforesseable”, as an old russian saying tolds.

But now we see the founding of at least 30.000 new orthodox churches, in our last thirty years, 5000 only from 2010, and this marks effectively the renaissance of a slavic-russian new identity, as a new resurrection of the traditional orthodox religious identity.

The dream of Tolstoj is now becoming true.

But now, in Ukrajne and in many towns in the russian south, slavic orthodoxy is usually in contradiction with the the greek tradition, which is growing, and this is the mirror of a complex relation, in the eastern churches, between the closing against Europe and the competing reaffermation of an unity, in the orthodox tradition, of the eurasian culture.

And, even for that, Russia is thinking itself alone. The useless Europe, servant od the USA and now even of China, the unpredictable Trump presidency, the possible and unheard exchange between Usa and Russia, with a reasonable trade for Assad in Sirya and a foreseeable minor pressure in Ukrajne for Russia by the US.

This is the effective geopolitical landscape for the future visit of Card. Parolin in the Russian Federation.

We could define this political line, held by the Vatican, as an old and common term: dialogue.

Card. Parolin wants to understand the “other” and wear their suits, to comprehend his needs, that is his perceived rights, his ideology, his grievancies and rights.

By the way, the old ideologies that retain him to a failed and uneffective past.

In Pope Francis and in card. Parolin view, to held a presence, for the catholic church, in the orthodox traditional areas may have many true meanings: the Pope, as his first line, wants to reunite the eastern world to the Europe, and so to recollect the old line of cultural, religious, cultic traditions that unite the ancient and old members of the “Rus” of Kiev to the eurasiatic peninsula.

Saying it loudly, the Church of Rome knows very well that the progressive, and inevitable, farewell of the Usa from Europe, on e of the most evident results of the end of the “cold war”, and Eu is a slave of a “export economy”, wich is prone to foreign debt, and the Russia Federation could even experiment a strucural economic and political crisis which could even broke its state.

These are the real points that Pope Francis and card. Parolin are treating with the russian government and the orthodox church.

So let’s make the Catholic church the main trait of union between the russian culture, religion and state and, by the way, the eurasian and western world.

Possibly, with its new relation with Rome, Moacow could not be isolated and colud even talk, effectively, with the Usa and the irrelevant UE.

Nil impossibile volenti. And this is the best formula I found for the the trip card. Parolin is going to define with the russia authorities.

And we must know that the the special interest of the catholic church for the russian world is a recent or superficial one.

Card. Parolin reminds us that Zar Nikola I paid his visit to the Pope, then Gregorio XVI, in 1845, aand two years later the same Zar signed an “Accomodamento” with Pope Pius IX.

Now it comes to our memory the idea, explicitated by Pope Giovanni Paolo II, that we must think of an “europe from the atlantic to the urals”.

In a different line from that of Charles De Gaulle, this will be the main line for the next phase of the catholic foreign policy.

The “precarization of every linkage”, which is the main line of thought in theb woeld after the end of the “cold war”, and this may be the root of the old, and creative, idea of a “third war in pieces” , a strange and new panoplia of war by trade, by third parties, by old techniques of “peaceenforcing”.

Following the line of Pope Francis and card. Parolin, wars are mainly decided by incertain geopolitical future, economic and financial tensions, mailny of an illegal nature, cultural and ethnic conflicts, even of a so called “religious nature” to which neither card. Parolin nor the Pope rely any ground.

Even nationalism, that came to Europe after brexit, is not a real problem for Europe.

The Pope and card. Parolin think that nationalism may void the UE from its remaining values, and both think that nationalism may deprive Ue from its remaining value and leave Europe as a sum of uneffective national states.

In the East, in the Orthodox area, the vatican wants to give God to the men and the men to God”, waiting for the complete freedom of the different churches (also in China) and, by the way, the freedom of every religion, either catholic or national or even non-christian ones.

After card. Parolin went to Bielorussia and ukrajne, that shall be one of the main stones for the new really universal church, not referring only to a “western” christian tradition, and playing for a brand new relation between the church and the state, the real, future, game.

Both Chirac and Sarkozy had five minutes to leave power, while François Hollande could even have five months to do so. In fact, at the time, eight Frenchmen out of ten approved his decision not to run for another term. As you may recall, part of President Hollande’s establishment did not accept automatically to lend a hand to Manuel Valls, the Prime Minister who wanted to join the "two Lefts", the one resulting from Hamon’s proposals for the primary election - a so-called gauche de la tradition - and the one which was being shaped around Macron, with whom Valls had nothing in common at political level.

Macron put together the moderate Left - the one of the old "American challenge" of Servan-Schreiber's radicals - with the less archaic part of Socialism. At the beginning of presidential election, nobody knows how many people will vote and, in particular, nobody knows the voting criteria yet.

Nevertheless, for Emmanuel Macron - who was finally supported by centrists, former non-voters and moderate leftists - politics is fully a marketing technique. We must always realize who does things; actions must be seen immediately. Finally we must perceive that a small advantage is directly linked to the leader’s choice.

A product, not a program, is sold - and this is an eternal rule. The founder of En Marche has focused his advertisement campaign on six factors pertaining to his personality and only on three really referring to his political program.

He is totally different from the political leaders who preceded him. He wants to reduce the number of Parliamentarians by a third. He knows very well what needs to be done to redress the French economy because he is a technocrat who owes nothing to anyone. He can recognize good ideas regardless of the camp from which they come. He wants to make employment the engine of his country. He never attacks the other candidates and he always tells the truth. He has founded a brand-new movement of 240,000 members and finally France cannot afford to risk a future economic and social disaster.

This is the paradigm of Macron’s political communication.

A well-organized mix of messages such as "a technocrat to power", "a leader setting great store by employment and the national economy", the saviour of the country. In particular, he shows he is completely different from all his predecessors.

If we analyse the electoral promises he made during the last French Presidential election, the real question we should ask is the following: can France still afford electoral political bargaining?

Are there financial and productive margins to implement even a small part of the programs launched by all candidates in 2017?

Since 2002 France has been experiencing full economic decline. Since 1980 it has had no steel industry (and certainly France is very interested in the outcome of the judicial and political disaster affecting ILVA steel plants in Taranto) nor sectors such as mechanical precision devices, boilers and thermodynamic grids, shipbuilding, agricultural machinery, household appliances, textiles and ready-to-wear clothing.

Since 2002 France has lost 865,000 jobs in the manufacturing industry, a quarter of all employees in a sector accounting for over 12% of the total jobs available.

In 1980 the jobs in the industrial sector were 5.1 million; in late 2012 they dropped to 3 million and currently there are only 2.9 million jobs still available.

The value currently produced by companies in France is 8%, the lowest rate in the European Union.

Deindustrialization, but above all lack of productive specialization of the French value chains.

Export is another sore point because France produces and sells mainly "low-end" products, which now have to face the direct competition of Chinese or, anyway, Asian items.

34,500 robots have been installed in France since late 2011 - a quarter of those operating in Germany and two times less than those already operating in Italy and Spain.

Nevertheless, Macron’s project - which, indeed, cannot much change this economic state of affairs in France - has two other political and strategic factors: Italy’s strategic marginalization and its economic downturn and market shrinkage resulting from its political crisis.

In 2011 Sarkozy started this beggar-thy-neighbour policy against Italy - at least politically and militarily - finally designed to weaken Italian small and medium-sized enterprises and privatize most of the oil industry and of what was left of the manufacturing industry.

The operation made in Libya by the French neo-Gaullist leader was the seal on Italy’s strategic and, hence, geo-economic autonomy - and it is worth noting that Italy’s miserable "Second Republic" counts for not even one tenth of the First Republic.

Hence France will “steal” the Italian sector of high-end and luxury products, which is not as skilful as Italy in manufacturing.

Despite how this may appear, Sarkozy’s choice of eliminating Gaddafi was not an irrational choice.

Apart from the recovery in election polls for the new Franco-Hungarian Napoleon, as well as the fear of having to pay the loans due by him to the Libyan Rais and the ongoing hypothesis of a Libyan Gold Dinar that was to wipe the CFA franc out, the neo-Gaullist President knew the Colonel wanted to leave power quickly.

Six months at most - with a guaranteed role as "Father of the Nation", as well as new democratic elections that would make his smart son, Saif al-Islam, rise to power.

Nevertheless Sarkozy’s "private" and personal oil in Benghazi (where the jihadists’ "democratic revolt" began, since Cyrenaica was the region with the largest share of Afghan Mujahedin in the total Islamic population) and the loans owed to the Rais that it was better not to repay, as well as a strange assassination, were all factors that made Sarkozy think he could make it easily.

Hence Macron knows that - as the members of the Organisation de l’Armée Sécrète (OAS) used to say - France’s geopolitical role can be built only in Africa.

If this is true, thanks to the structural destabilization of Libya, the strategic project will be to integrate the whole system between Tripoli and Benghazi into the new Françafrique, from which Italy - and maybe even Great Britain - will be excluded.

Where, in Africa or elsewhere, has Italy its key strategic point? Has no one really thought about it?

Certainly, in Egypt, we have been fooled and replaced exactly by France - after the badly managed Regeni’s affair; we are virtually irrelevant in Morocco, despite the internal political tensions (King Mohammed VI would need Italy’s help rather than a heavy French favour); we take very limited action in Algeria and we have no say in the matter in the Horn of Africa.

If, indeed, there is no European geopolitics without an African policy (except for Germany, which is obviously focused on the Slavs), Italy has none.

Apart from the latest French economic and business acquisitions in Italy, which are still being developed and finalised, currently France controls 185 Italian companies which are worth 50 billion Euro, while Italy owns or controls 97 French companies totalling 7.5 billion Euro.

7% of the Milan Stock Exchange capitalization is in the hands of French companies, while Italy controls a mere 0.9% of the Paris Stock Exchange.

Why? One of the reasons is certainly the extreme fragmentation of the Italian production system, as well as Italian politicians’ scarce perception of the phenomena that appear to be "market" ones, but are not at all so.

Nothing is more pleasing than looking at politicians - staunch supporters of public ownership, if not para-Soviet advocates of State-controlled centralism - who believe that any business transaction between companies has no political and strategic relevance.

"It is the market ...". Not at all. It is the political and strategic wisdom, which we do not see in action today.

Both in the case of SXT-Fincantieri and in the other economic negotiations between France and Italy, a serious Italian government would have reacted vigorously and with harsh countermeasures - by also perceiving the inevitable geopolitical aspects and responding credibly, in Africa as elsewhere.

Another key factor of Macron's new foreign policy and his specific relationship with Italy - currently regarded by France as a punching ball - is migration.

Macron stated he would not accept any "economic migrant" coming from the border with Italy, while the State Police authorities are informing us that many migrants already living in France and without documents are forced to cross the Ventimiglia border and get on Italian trains.

When there is massive migration, both as a result of wars (a few, in today’s Africa) and of consumerist induced psychosis (in many cases), as well as of the youth bulge - as happened throughout Africa precisely thanks to a semblance of economic development - every country chooses the best migrants for itself.

The large German companies go to the Turkish refugee camps to hoard Syrian physicians, engineers and technicians.

Italy, mired in an old-style and old-fashioned ideology, is still working on the wrong assumption that we can welcome everybody.

This means that the cost of useless, sick, unfit-to-work and socially dangerous immigrants will be borne by the countries that have also lost this globalization game - and it will be a heavy drain on the deficit/GDP ratio.

Conversely, the cost of skilful, active, dynamic and well-trained immigrants will improve the overall productivity of countries that - unlike Italy - have won the globalization fight.

As is the case with Germany, Macron will choose the best immigrants.

Furthermore, considering that mass immigration is an indirect strategy technique, the fact of filling a competing country, albeit a EU Member State, with "half-devils and half-children" - as Kipling said - means blocking it with unproductive spending and draining its share for investment in businesses and new technologies, as well as barbarizing and Africanizing it.

Therefore Emmanuel Macron, who is already a skilful international banker, is the point of arrival for a reconstruction of France arising from a well-defined intellectual background.

It is the background of Jacques Attali, a banker of Mitterand origin, who is at the forefront of a project that has much to do with the recent American CEO capitalism: to make everything that traditionally has no real economic value productive and economically useful.

When the production of industrial or material value decreases - and for many years - it must be offset by the creation of symbolic and communicative value.

In fact, the American CEO capitalism appears to be the universe of free "content" on the Web, but - as the professionals of the sector say - "when you have nothing to buy, it means that you are the one whom has already been bought".

Advertising, personal data, business preferences, profiling - even at political level - networking and relations - everything is sold by naïve users without them even realizing it and - keep in mind - without them having anything to gain.

This is a lot of money, as is demonstrated by the magnificent budgets of many seemingly "service" companies such as Facebook.

Hence Attali’s idea points to selling the genetic heritage, even life, so as to turn all that today is not included in the old capitalist paradigm into economy.

Therefore, reverting to Macron's new Françafrique project, France will soon expand its traditional area of influence in Central Africa northwards and later to Fezzan, Chad and Niger up to Libya.

The project is to reunite the new French Africa with Egypt.

The above-described actions will be supported by a new political-military union with Germany, with which it will even be possible to plan together at least part of their respective Armed Forces.

That is the reason why General De Villiers left.

Hence France commanding from the North up to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, in a region which could provide France with many advanced raw materials and a huge mass of workforce to be used locally, as well as an immense power of negotiating and interfering in global affairs.

In Macron’s opinion, the agreement between Khalifa Haftar - the leader of the Libyan "Operation Dignity" and strong man of the local regime, not only of Cyrenaica - and al-Sarraj is the strategic link for doing two things: avoiding, as long as possible, Libya’s partition and fragmentation - which, indeed, France does not fear - and also getting Italy and any other Western player out of the way.

Trump wanted to take quick action in Libya and found the French President willing to support him.

Italy should have done it, but there was no way.

Minister Minniti, a serious and brilliant intelligence expert, reached agreements with the sixty primary tribes out of the over one hundred tribes present there - and indirectly with the various internal armed gangs. ENI and our intelligence Services did a good job, but when there is no strategic mastermind, they remain mere disconnected sensory organs.

It is worth repeating that the agreement between the two Libyan governments, one existing and the other merely surviving thanks to the good will of a "useless entity" - as Francesco Cossiga dismissed the United Nations - is targeted against Italy which, except for Minister Minniti’s abilities, has not shown any idea or reaction in this respect.

Probably - as already appears - also the agreement brokered by Emmanuel Macron will last l’espace d’un matin since Libya cannot be led and run as a condo board meeting and we shall soon choose a strong and credible leader - as SISMI did, in a hotel of Abano Terme, by selecting Sirte’s young Colonel, Muammar al-Gaddafi.

Furthermore an agreement needs to be reached between the Berbers and the Tuareg, who can blow up any deal and have the possibility of managing very strong alliances with the other tribes.

Hence the game is open and we could even get back in it, but no rational solutions are perceived in Italy.

From the 1970s onwards, politics has undergone a very extensive and thorough conceptual transformation. I am not referring to the usual and trivial issue of the "crisis of ideologies" or the end of Right or Left all-encompassing narratives. Nevertheless the idea that the post-modern world - which was already on the horizon at the time - could do without what Wittgenstein called "super-orders of super-concepts" has been currently wiped out by reality.

On the current political and philosophical scene there are much greater super-orders than those typical of the bipolar world.

Just think of the post-modern politics derived from Nietzsche’s philosophy or of the wide-ranging issue arising from the confrontation between the Western, secular and religious models and those typical of Islam (and the Chinese traditional culture).

Hence the first point to raise is that technique - positivistically regarded as an objective practice not influenced by value judgements - cannot even define its aim and its scope of action.

In fact, if we resort to a procedure to solve a specific political and social problem and we use only the technique, I cannot even define it and hence solve it. Where does the impact of new robotic technologies start and end? There is no limit that can define it materially. Hence each technique has its own defined set of values and every application of tèchnè is subjected to a series of conceptual, philosophical, historical and ideal approvals that are not written in the procedure, but are always there anyway.

If we had no philosophical criterion for defining social justice, we could equally accept the "Obamacare" or the Italian National Health System (NHS), but these are two radically different choices. Hence which is the "health policy" par excellence?

Furthermore, the concept is always based on the recognition of its limit, which is not only applicative, but also descriptive. A limit we cannot define beforehand, but must be checked against reality, by applying the concept in a semi-casual way.

A thing is that thing and not another. If we lose sight of the designation of the idea - and hence of its natural limit - we have not a concept, but a flatus vocis identifying at least two different - and, maybe, opposing - things with the same sign. Hence the idea that in current politics there are no longer effective conceptual limits is not just a resource of propaganda, but a real practical and ideal limit.

Unemployment cannot be solved with the "social wage" because its cost is borne by those who still work and pay taxes. The education crisis cannot be solved by making school curricula even easier, since this makes them even more useless. Unfortunately, however, a paradox prevails in all the current governments’ standard political procedures.

It is the paradox of the parts and the sum of these parts. I may also think that Rosso Fiorentino's "Deposition from the Cross" is just a set of brush strokes, but I can never exactly reproduce it. In politics, this means that I may also separate - by means of a pseudo-scientific (and useless) process - the traits of a phenomenon (provided that later this phenomenon is not turned into another), but I cannot solve it only by recomposing its parts differently.

I cannot solve the problem of falling population with immigration, because this phenomenon has a cost that would not be there if there were a normal population replacement rate - and for the additional reason that creating a workforce coming from other regions (net of transfer costs, which are certainly not negligible) is very different from creating it on the spot.

Hence Popper’s myth of "social engineering" is a false myth, considering that we cannot fully reproduce complex phenomena such as the political ones and also considering that no political fact can be completely isolated from the others. The "social engineering" myth also relates to the idea that the myths, ideas and motivations of the peoples and the ruling classes are completely irrelevant compared to the old "super-structures" in the Marxist meaning of the word. However, there are physical, chemical and biological reactions. Politics - and foreign policy, in particular - is a biological reaction.

This is another major mistake: politics - and foreign policy, in particular - is made up of myths, perceptions, cultural patterns and symbols. There would not currently be Emmanuel Macron’s grandeur in France without Charles De Gaulle’s. And the inferiority complex of the Italian politicians, when it comes to dealing with foreign policy, stems from the fact that they have naively accepted the narrative made by our former enemy turned into a friend after World War II. While Western Germans have never completely regretted the Third Reich, given the propaganda and the "repression of painful memories" which took place after the Allies’ occupation, the Italians were laid the blame for everything, obviously in addition to be considered "traitors" or "treacherous".

Those who make others create their own identity, lose it. Not to mention the fact that Republican Italy has always avoided implementing foreign policy on its own, under the pretext - for fear of the largest Communist Party in the West - of the obligations arising from the Atlantic Alliance’s membership or, more recently, under the pretext of the comical peacekeeping activities where there are wars.

This currently applies to all Western countries: voters are no longer interested in foreign policy. They are interested in symbolic, but national actions (the fight against the so-called "caste") or in equally national real benefits, such as jobs or pensions. The current democracies do no longer stand the test of foreign policy, which requires brilliant minds and unprecedented prediction abilities. Nonetheless, in the globalization era, it is precisely from foreign policy that many of the symbolic and real benefits and assets, which appear to be typical of national policy, come.

Furthermore, foreign policy in Italy and abroad is currently implemented on the basis of fully archaic and clearly propaganda-oriented choices. It is also implemented at the lowest level - see the famous "spreading of democracy" - or in a slightly more structured way - see the "fight against terrorism". Terrorism is one of the jihad techniques and this is precisely the real context of the asymmetric warfare launched against us, "Jews and Infidel", by a vast part of contemporary Islam.

Nor does the usual paleo-Marxist inference apply - namely that the oil issue underlies the jihad. This is certainly true, but there is also the attempt to unify the Islam after the fragmentation of many Muslim "failed States", as well as the Islamist struggle to conquer Africa and Asia, where the old "Cold War" countries do not operate any longer. Finally there is also the ideological and political management of the huge Islamic migration into Western countries. In foreign policy there is not only one single "foundation", but there are always many of them at the same time.

The sum of the parts does not provide the shape of the whole; the sequence of phenomena does not indicate their real relevance and the time when historical facts occur does not tell or indicate their importance.

Obviously, in the case of our politicians, the law of the old US Senator, Tip O'Neill, still applies: every policy is local. And also Ian Budge’s thesis of rational choice applies: every politician tries - first and foremost - to be re-elected. As already noted, however, currently it is foreign policy that distorts the national one - it is no longer as during the "Cold War" when foreign policy in Italy was shaped and implemented by our allies.

Nevertheless, how should we currently think in terms of foreign policy? Firstly, the sequences and the most likely consequences of a particular choice should be defined - without ever forgetting exceptions. There is a conceptual mapping deriving from the traditional one - maps are a substitute for the territory. Secondly, the potential of each secondary phenomenon should be assessed: obviously we can send our soldiers to the Middle East with specific rules of engagement or alliances, but we must also be able to "imagine" what would happen if our soldiers were attacked by Hamas or the Sinai Islamic Jihad. Different effects for the same phenomenon. Moreover, foreign policy has to do with alchemy: if we send soldiers to the Middle East, we must be able to use this political-military success to obtain less expensive oil contracts or even to sell our weapons to the local peoples or to become essential at the peace negotiating table.

Indeed, Cavour's idea of sending the Piedmontese soldiers to Crimea was excellent.

Hence, foreign policy can be used on multiple fronts and negotiating tables, provided we are able to do so. Moreover, implementing foreign policy means creating an inevitably global phenomenon: those who deals with it, knows very well that every operation has multiple and sometimes unpredictable consequences, but always ranging from culture to the economy, from technology to arts. In principle, nothing is excluded from foreign policy.

Finally those who are not able to run are not even able to walk: the ruling classes that do not know how to develop a foreign policy line in keeping with their goals do not even know how to implement domestic or economic policy.

Italy is now a clear victim of globalization, which is governed only by those who have a very precise vision of their own country and have access to very confidential information, as well as by those who are able to quickly and wisely exploit its continued asymmetries and finally by those countries that impose their game with a wide range of "indirect strategies".

These are the dimensions of the battlefield of this new, endless, "limitless war" which is fought without even firing a shot.

Non-sovereignty over its own national space, now ratified by unconscionable agreements on territorial waters with France in February 2016, or with the new borders between Italy and Slovenia on the Torrente Barbucina, as well as the utter foolishness - despite Interior Minister Minniti's professionalism - in the late response to the epochal crisis of migration from sub-Saharan Africa, all are signs that - after losing the globalization game - Italy is also losing sight of the Hobbesian goals for which all Sovereigns are born, namely protecting the life, property and freedom of their citizens.

Today the losers do not go to Versailles hat in hand, but are simply wiped out.

Hence those who lose the globalization game are pulverized and turned into an undisputed mass of losers, whereas the winners become a new nation-State absorbing and hegemonizing its neighbours.

Not to mention the tensions on the external value of the euro and the complex manoeuvres on government debt securities.

The real rulers govern also financial markets; they do not expect to be contacted, they talk to those markets every day and can impose their will on them.

Hence, for Italy the Second Republic - as it is called with some exaggeration - has been only a crown of thorns.

Born as a swindle, the one of "honest" politicians against the "thieves", it will end - unlike what T.S. Eliot said - “not with a bang but a whimper”.

And it will continue to be a silly crown of thorns, while the future governments will believe in an inevitable fate or in what Saragat - a great albeit now forgotten political leader - called the "cynical and cheating destiny".

The rampant corruption which, in the transition phase from the First to the Second Republic, simply shifted from the ruling class to the administrative-bureaucratic class; the environmental crisis and the recent fires; the economic growth affecting only exports and only to the tune of 18%; mass poverty and the tension that will never slacken with these low economic growth rates, are all signs that we are passive subject and not the active subject of global strategies decided by others and about which our rulers know nothing.

As long as these are the elites representing us, the disgusted people will vote elsewhere, while the superficially globalized ruling classes will unite, but will gradually lose any power.

Hence the Catholic Church responds to the new global scenario with Pope Francis, a Bishop of Rome coming from Argentina, another country of failed globalization and economic disasters caused by the combination of hetero-directed policies and parasitic ruling classes.

As demonstrated by the latest article by Father Antonio Spadaro, director of "La Civiltà Cattolica", that rightly aroused great interest in the current cultural and political world, the Catholic Church knows very well what is really at stake.

In this perspective, Pope Francis’ Church is changing its evangelization model completely.

In other words, Catholicism is currently playing its new global role as winner of globalization in everybody’s favour - and particularly in favour of the countries and peoples that are losing this game.

Following his Jesuit background, Pope Francis wants to transform - on the basis of equality - Peter’s Church into a universal Church, even at physical and material levels.

Never be identified as "part of the West", but as the suffering Heart of Christ in all mankind.

This reminds us of the Jesuits who learnedly equated the Sioux and Cheyenne mythologies to the Trinitarians’ ones, or of the Fathers who introduced - in Portuguese India - Hindu or Buddhist words in the Holy Mass.

The Holy Pope’s words seem to echo the cries of the Jesuits who organized estancias in Paraguay or who always defended Latin American peoples during the 20th century dictatorships. such as Father Jalics, or the cry of the six Jesuits killed in El Salvador’s universities only twenty-five years ago, possibly while some high prelates played tennis with the "Generals".

Hence we can understand the Vatican’s rational negotiations with China, disliked by the Conservatives, or the political and religious connection with the Russian Federation, while Cardinal Parolin is preparing for a visit to Moscow that will certainly lead to significant results.

As Cardinal Parolin stated, the visit to Russia, at the time when the relations between Russia and the West are at the lowest ebb, shall build new "bridges" and pave the way for a dialogue with the Kremlin’s leadership "in which we put ourselves in the shoes of others" - so as to talk about Middle East, Islam and Ukraine also with Putin and his aides and associates, but certainly with Patriarch Kirill.

In the past it was the Russian President who donated to Pope Francis a copy of St. Vladimir’s icon of the Mother of God, the highly-venerated icon that was flown over Moscow’s skies by the atheist Stalin at the toughest time of the Nazi siege.

Never was a gift more politically symbolic.

At that time, somehow rightly, there was talk about an alliance between Russia and the Vatican in a pro-Shiite perspective and, in any case, excluding the United States.

In our opinion, the fundamental fact is that currently the Church of Christ makes global politics just because it is abandoning its typically Western image and approach and hence does no longer want to be regarded and interpreted according to the positive or negative categories developed in the wake of this universe of political and cultural identities.

This is universalism, also and above by putting itself in the shoes of others and of their very ancient traditions.

In fact, Xi Jinping reminded Pope Francis of the Jesuit artist, Father Castiglione, and the Holy Father, who loves the Chinese people, said to the Chinese President that "the world is awaiting the wisdom and civilization of the Chinese people".

As St. Ignatius of Loyola said, while obviously referring to Satan, the enemy is like a military leader who must besiege a city and get round its walls to find a weak point.

For the Pope who comes from the Society of Jesus, the enemy getting round the world that must be saved by the Word is the old dual thinking that caused the peripheral wars during the USA-USSR confrontation, characterized by a closed-mind cultural approach, by the fear of the others and by the hegemony of the old powers.

If the old "Cold War" balance of power remains after this phase of globalization, only old living corpses will remain.

While the globalization-Americanization still seeks to divide the world between the rich and the poor, between the winners and the losers, by crazily widening gaps, Pope Francis wants to build "bridges" with everyone so as to prevent the globalization of the economy - or indeed its Americanization - from still breaking mankind into two.

It is worth recalling that there is the severe danger that the universalisation of the economy - or even the absolute adoration of the golden calf - binds itself to an economic system based on a politically overvalued currency, with a huge debt - namely the US dollar - and to a project of "democratic wars," such as the absurd Arab Springs, which are bound to create very poor small client States and often odd ethnicity pockets.

And the future wars will certainly be "never-ending" conflicts which are intended to stabilize at a high level of contrast.

Hence the Church’s bridges are designed to avoid or overcome a new Yalta, or to marginalize some peoples and favour others.

And this is a fundamental theme, namely the polemic on the Protestant political theology, which can be found in Father Spadaro’s article.

The Puritanism that was sent, as punishment, to the thirteen colonies was a kind of proto-jihadism within the Church of England that the sect sent there by the London Inquisition (also the Church of England had its own Inquisition) accused of being too pro-Catholic.

It is worth recalling that the word "fundamentalism" was coined in the modern era within the many factions of American Puritanism, and was later applied by similarity to the neo-extremist factions of the Wahhabi jihad and to the theology of the "Solid Base" (al-Qaeda al-Sulbah) - halfway between the Karigites and the Muslim Brotherhood - that went to Afghanistan with Saudi, Pakistani and US funds to fight against the Red Army.

It was a US friend, a cruel butcher of the Balkan wars, Alja Izetbegovic, who in the 1940s, in Tito’s prisons, wrote the book entitled "Islamic Fundamentalism".

Hence, in the North-American Protestant theology, Father Spadaro sees an empirical connection between religion and politics, between the brains and the brawn, without any assessment of circumstances - a Machiavellian and Jesuit theme.

We may say that currently in the Unites States the reformed radical religiosity is present almost exclusively within the social classes marginalized by globalization, that have no voice in today’s US society.

Not even with a President prisoner of the "Deep State" between the State Department and CIA, that - for once - agreed to have a Clinton Presidency to "end the job" in Syria and create a casus belli with the Russian Federation.

A sort of Dr. Strangelove, who deals with psychological and IT wars, is currently operating in some US halls of power.

However, both the US ruling class and the US working class - that is more linked to the images spread by media - are prey to a real negatio Dei.

By using the title of a famous Rolling Stones’ song, this negatio Dei often turns into a practical and operational sympathy for the devil.

The refusal of any vestiges of Western civilization in fashionable university campuses; the servile implementation of "political correctness", which even comically erase the great classics - as not even done by the Red Guards, who at least had the courage to destroy them; the systematic destruction of personal identities and "intermediate bodies", that have always been the basis of every democracy from Pericles to the present time, are all signs that not only - and not so much - the old fundamentalist and Protestant theology, but today's atheism-Satanism, are the real enemies to be fought.

Certainly, the former created the latter and every Gnostic reference to God's will according to our desires - from the Cathars to the Hussites until present time - with the theologies of confusion and wellbeing, is a Gnosticism calling the Enemy to operate directly.

It is worth remembering, however, that in the United States the fundamentalist Protestant theology is typical of those who are losing the game of globalization, while the establishment - that is the offspring of the LSD "dilated experiences" and of the American nonconformist 1968 protest movement (experiences that it later implemented in creative accounting and finance) - hates God, even Comenius’ God, with a fiery passion. Hence it has full sympathy for the devil and fights explicitly against any religion and forms of transcendence, with the pretext of a cheap form of “enlightenment”.

A fight even against the transcendence now lost in all Western ruling classes, focused on a unitary but not ecclesial, as well as a ritual but universalistic theology, which has always characterized the oldest traditions of Freemasonry, such as that of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.

Today, especially in Italy, the narrative of the Association that has materially built Italy’s unit is linked to "Mafia", "corruption" and to other scarcely esoteric issues.

Hence the real glue holding the ruling class is lost, while in the past the old Liberals and many Socialists, as well as many Republicans and some liberal Catholics, sat amicably in the Freemasons’ Lodge, thus being trained to dialogue and to political and human maturation.

In political terms, the loss of prestige of the Masonic Brotherhood is the seal of the structural fragmentation of Western ruling classes, which will bring them to death.

Without a unitary and identity narrative of elites, they will be progressively dissected and later destroyed.

Certainly the purpose of the current establishment is to reach a re-edition of Orwell’s 1984, but with a difference: what was previously explicit conditioning - engrammed, through consumers’ and Web algorithms, in everybody’s apparently free behaviour.

The new totalitarianism will lead us to do the same things, to buy the same items, to become poor and powerless, albeit with a feeling of instinctive omnipotence and uniqueness of the ego that certainly Orwell’s regime could not afford. Indeed, a Metaphor of Sovietism as it was.

Hence Italy will be a completely non-existent power.

We will only be a buffer country between Africa and North Europe, without even being allowed to say anything, by crawling like cats on the windows.

We will become a North-European colony with regard to the still productive structures. All the Northern productive chains are integrated into the German value chain. Hence it is worth recalling that the Neue Zuercher Zeitung has recently predicted a slow annexation of Lombardy to the Canton of Ticino by 2050 - and there are already many signs in this regard.

Nevertheless we will have a huge amount of people in the South - similar to what Baron Compagna defined as "rabbit runs" - who will live on charity at the expense of public debt or organized crime, which will make its globalization, between Africa and the South and between Southern Italy and the Balkan and Asian drugs routes.

As a great Italian banker predicted "we will be a country for tourism and art".

When we created our great art masterpieces, however, Vespucci colonized North America, the Genoese bankers borrowed money to the King of Spain and Switzerland only provided us with the mercenaries that Machiavelli disliked.

Certainly, with a view to solving the Italian crisis at institutional level, the notes that President Cossiga sent to Parliament on June 26, 1991 would be enough.

Something very different from the Senate working half-time, as envisaged by the recent reform rejected by voters.

It was simple: end of the Constitution written by enemies who were glowering at one another, but were only busy blocking one another - and in fact a US analyst has defined our Constitution "the most dysfunctional in the world"; revision of local authorities and of the specific autonomy of the Higher Judiciary Council (CSM); a different and stricter organization of public finances.

We will talk about this issue, by also recalling a beautiful project developed by Gianfranco Miglio and some of his colleagues, gathered in the "Club of Milan".

This ruling class, however, will do nothing but die in this institutional bed, now unable to dictate even one twitter to its press officer.

We live in a post-genocidal society, divided into ethnic-religious ghetto by means of war. In such broken society are continually inserted seductive and controversial concepts that serve the goals that are not realized by means of war.

The terms such as federalism, unitarism and separatism come mainly as political games of political life actors in our country, but regarding the separatism of the entities RS, the Greater Serbian policy is absolutely focused on this goal. The shaping of political reality and the main ideas in it is a work of the ideology – par excellence, which then means that these terms are mostly ideologically determined and conceived in the minds of their constructors.

We should remember that M. Kasapović (Zagreb) in 2005 imposed and installed the term of consociation as territorial separation of the people in Bosnia and as the only possible model for the organization of the political system in Bosnia, followed by an orchestrated story of federalization and electoral units. The vague concept about the "impossible state" by N. Kecmanović (Banjaluka) is added to this in 2007 and till today, these two, assembled Serbian-Croatian projects of the dissolution of Bosnia stifled us and taken to a blind track of history. Kasapović has already come to Cyprisation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These two names, Kasapović and Kecmanović, are witnesses to the great moral problem that has dampened our present social reality! We did not forget that on the ground of Bosnia, "pure ethnic territories" were created. On the objection that separatism must be halted, separatist forces respond that separatism is a reaction to unitarism and the non-recognition of entity "RS" or the necessity of federalization because of the vulnerability of Croats by Bosniaks.

Thus, the syntagm of "unitarist politics" is a good excuse to continue the policy of division, ghettoization, hatred, great Serbian policy and similar enterprises. The Dayton political system with imposed Constitution in Anex IV has brought peace to Bosnia, but, it should be emphasized, left the hope of anti-Bosnian forces to continue what they did not end in the war. This was immediately understood by the Greater Serbian policy and the entity RS was called the "Serbian state", "war booty" or "the rest of the remnants of the Serbian ethnic territory" west of the Drina River. The name of the entity itself allows this in perspective!

Many people are already "trained" to speak "Serbian entity" regardless of the fact that it was made by genocide against Bosniaks. Unitarianism is falsely identified with majorization in the explanations of separatist policies that, in fact, do not want the state of Bosnia or want only the formally present state institutions that are subordinate to the entity. The unitary system of government means that there is a state power that is accomplished throughout the territory of the state. Relating to this idea, Bosnia is a highly decentralized state divided into entities and cantons, which considerably slows down its functioning. The key matter is that separatism and federalism as parts of the political ideology of anti-Bosnianism do not want strong state of Bosnia. In such divided state, there we cannot talk about unitarism. The expansionist nationalism of Serbs and Croats sees its goal in the assimilation of the Bosnian territory, then the "territorial authority" of ethnics means suppressing everything different from our "territory" and disregarding that in “our territory "state power or some national (state) institution has any influence. From here to dissolution, it is just a step. This is the way that tribal games go to the extreme. Serbian and Croatian national projects are seeking a "Bosniak policy" that would agree to implementation of Bosnian state's dissolution in this way and end with its political and historical existence. A brave Bosnian policy should offer the concept of regionalization of the state area and constantly insist on it regardless of all Serbian-Croatian agreements against Bosnia. Bosnia has five historical regions that derive their meaningful existence from medieval times and that should not be ridden of the mind. In addition, the Bosnian ethatist political philosophy must be reaffirmed, therefore, a new development of awareness of the importance of the state. By this, it should be ended the Bosniak jeremiad in the last twenty years and defeated the anti-politics.

The ideologized vocabulary of anti-Bosnian politics

We must not agree to accept the ideologized vocabulary of anti-Bosnian politics at all. Unfortunately, we still do not have a sufficiently strong Bosnian policy that could deal with numerous subversives, simulacrums, deceptions and abuses of the system institutions, and we are all troubled by the failure of the rule of law. Parts of the law apply only to powerless or politically unbounded. It seems that the system of law in this country is the main source of corruption and manipulation of citizens, such a monstrous system that we have not even imagined. Organized groups have appropriated "right" of rights institutions and it appears as "party" and "ethnic" property, plus family clans, and the state is catastrophically damaged and turned into a "super-market" for robbery. The law system is subordinate to political groups that implement their constructions of social life. Weak state institutions open the space to all degenerative phenomena that undermine political stability. The state is vulnerable, institutionally deprived and does not breathe full of lungs. It would be good if the unitary system of government worked and organized the political life in the state through the devolution. It would be much more order, responsibility and better life. There would be no anarchy, hunting in the fog, ethnophulism in the education system, anachronistic ideologies, mythical consciousness, Chetniks and Ustasha, denying of genocide, denying the right to Bosnian language for children in schools ... In post genocidal society, a strong and responsible state is needed in order to overcome war trauma and reached legal satisfaction. What we have now is a knock-together form of war achievements and fulfilled wishes of the Milosević’s regime.

The bureaucrats from the so-called International community

We should not be naive and believe to bureaucrats from the so-called International community, to people like for example, B. B. Ghali, J. Akashi, J. Mayor, M. Lajčak or C. Bildt and many others, known and unknown. They consider Bosnia as a regular working task and they did not carry out anything to improve life in Bosnia. Let remember José Cutilliero, Lord Carrington, David Owen, Philippe Morillon and dozens of others who have done everything to carry out an anti-Bosnian idea in Bosnia and led us to the madness of the division of the country towards the ethnic-religious lines of war conquest. They were "just mediators" – that sounds innocently. They came here as maharaja with their colonial narrations. Today's generations must not forget these people and must save a real memory about them. It is important, for example, to leave a recorded memory of F. Mitterrand and similar figures of modern cynicism that convinced us that we could walk across the city under the siege of Serbian howitzers and snipers beside the burnt City Hall or Markale. They turned our disaster into a "humanitarian issue" and shamefully closed their eyes against the genocide against Bosniaks all over the Bosnia. In addition, Bosnia is settled at the heart of the former South Slavic area and it is "ideal" as a focal point in which Western, European, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, civilized mediators "experts" can be involved for the division of territories leaving the peoples in conflicts. When “bureaucrats” stop working this in the Balkans, it is absolutely certain that peace will be here – to avoid saying eternal peace, because we have never started wars. Let's look back to the 20th century - everything was transparent. Egoistic bureaucrats do not need civil Bosnia or peace among South Slavic "tribes", because what would they do then and how they deal with their problems. European bureaucrats have been watching aggression on Bosnia for four years and wrote letters to Milošević. They did not provide protection and defence of an independent state with the UN forces. In today's constellation, they worry about the Bosnian and South Slavic "primitives" who do not know what "civil society" is and play the role of a civilizing factor.

The political matrix of ethnic-religious representation of people

It would be worth to express a sceptical attitude towards the "civil political option" syntagm, because it does not have clear semantic structure, as well as a "nationalist policy". Until we begin to name precisely the phenomena around us, we will not know what is happening to us! Since the 1990s in Bosnia the political matrix of ethnic-religious representation of people has been imposed, so that they have not appeared as individuals, citizens, free citizens, but only and exclusively as members of the team/collective, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Others. In that wretched matrix, people of Bosnia are not autonomous and free individuals. They have to think as the "team/collective says" or the priest on behalf of the team/collective (tribe, people, nation, religion) and in such way their individuality is reduced of them, and then they are only "cannon flesh" of some great "Načertanija" (1844) and pathological conditions of hegemonic politics. Such a collectivist spirit is controlled by religious institutions and ruling political oligarchs. Here, the religion is the basis of the nation - and it tells us where we are!

It is an illusion to present the policy throughout the conceptual pair of "nationalist" and "civil" politics when we know that this is only the seductive surface of the project of tribal division of the people of the South Slavic area and the imposition of a matrix to Bosnia that opposes against its historical political philosophy. Our heroic peoples, who have neglected their production of knowledge and general culture, managed by people with suspicious projects, they will be slaves and serfs in the upcoming establishment of the world order as a system of hegemony of several powers. The pair of terms "civil" and "nationalist" does not correspond to the essential meaning of the historical process in which we are overtaken by a sub-national political culture, a feudalized landscape in which neither citizens nor nationalists “can” appear. We have not yet learned to participate freely in a democratic culture as citizens with their opinions and interests. We still need tribal chiefs and priests who do not know anything about the Bosnian political future! We need to ask questions that help us to focus primarily. For example, first of all - how did it happen that we are the only ones in today's Europe who has a "tribal political system" or a "state of tribes", such a constitutional arrangement imposed by Annex IV? Who set us this up as the Constitution of the State? Why all European diplomats are silent on this issue and say that we should "agree" when they, as the International Community, have fulfilled the wishes of the aggressors and nationalist forces in the Balkans and against Bosnia?

This cynical European bureaucracy, above all, regardless of European ideals, is a self-sufficient, static and enlarging political group that accumulates great power in its hands. It pretends as awkward in front of the Balkan fascists, the Nazis, the fundamentalists, because such characters serve it as an example of the "primitive Balkans" and "wild Slavic tribes" who are slaughtered each other without mercy. This colonial background and the orientalistic image about us disable a realistic approach to solving problems in this area. There are also quite low and hypocritical moves of Croatian "European" policy that plays its petty-bourgeois super-ordination to this area and shows itself to others as an "heir of European values" while supporting the Hague convicts with Tompson's songs and ideology. This Croatian unilateralism has led to the incomparable exodus of Bosnian Croats from their homeland - Bosnia and has torn them away from their Bosnian state. The second guidance that helps us to orient ourselves is focused on understanding the distinction between national and ethnic, civil and ethnicity.

First of all, it should be reminded that in the area of South East Europe, where the South Slavic nations were located, the state structure of these nations failed because they were mostly obsessed with their own mythical, religious and ethnic constructions or fabrications that served them to represent themselves as a nation superior to others. In Bosnia, this has been happening during the whole 20th century in big noises of the Serbian and Croatian national determinations. Thus, the national question was shaped at a very primitive level as a question of creating an ethnic-religious state from which all who are not "ours" by religion and nationality will be excluded. This incompetence for the difference led the national question under the control of religious institutions of Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks. In one-track politics, the nuances of the fascist-shape relation to the different are noticed, as R. Konstantinović wrote about it, so knowledgeable and anticipatory, as well as Miodrag Popović. So, it could be said that the South Slavic peoples, as well as the peoples of Bosnia, have not yet developed and tested a political culture that surpasses the "tribal image of the world" and prefers free man as the greatest value of the social life of people.

We need to teach people that nationally are not a tribal, ethnic, folk, regional or ethnic-religious definition of a person, but it is meant that a free citizen belongs to a state-nation that assures him all human rights as to its citizen. Nationality is thus a civil definition, a legal-political concept of people's life who does not exclude their cultural perceptions of themselves. So, it is time to learn to distinguish the political-legal level of human life in the community from the cultural-historical dimension through which a certain national identity is recognized as specific among others. The Bosnian Serbs were captured in the mythologist of the 19th century about the "great Serbian state" in which all Serbs will live and - only Serbs. In front of them there is a great historical task to overcome their own misconceptions, self-denial and historical blind alley.

A similar process of liberation from the "Ottoman image of the world" has already begun by the Bosniaks and they are carrying it out. In the end, it should be emphasized that in our country the civil has not yet matured in citizenship awareness, but it entails historicist narratives of Tito-statehood, fraternity and unity, communism and a one-party world, the monolithic Left, existence without identity, misunderstanding of anti-Fascism, bipolar diversity of the world, unable to anticipate the new Bosnian idea of life, and so on. In fact, the civil has never come to life in this region as a political culture of respecting a man, an individual, a free citizen of the Bosnian nation. We still do not know what it means to be a citizen, free and conscious again in our own Bosnianhood? We have not considered this in the past thirty years under the siege of collective metaphysics of ethnic-religious groups. In today's monstrous political systems, this seems to be utopian, unreal and unachievable before the dictatorship of party oligarchies, leaders and their assistants. In that danger is growing the rescue-thing - Heidegger would remind to Hoelderlin.

There are moments in the life of a nation when a sudden event illuminates with stunning clarity an essential part of its character. The effect is most powerful when the trait exposed is at variance with the long established image. Such a moment has arrived in Britain with the Grenfell affair.

None can now avert their gaze from what post-Thatcher society has degenerated into. It is a “so, this what we have become” moment. Less dramatic than the installing of Donald Trump in the White House, Grenfell has torn away the veil from an unbecoming national visage.

The revealing truth is portrayed in graphic pictures and shameful words. A tower block going up in flames like a papier-mache construction; close to a hundred killed – and still counting; no assistance whatsoever from the responsible Kensington & Chelsea Council; an insulting absence of concern or commitment to redress failings by the same authorities; a curtain of secrecy on initial plans to scatter the survivors across the length and breadth of England; offers of supposed long-term relocation in basement apartments on heavily trafficked roads or other towers slated for demolition; many families split up and/or shuffled from one temporary accommodation to another; a self-absorbed Prime Minister refusing to meet them; revelations that the flammable cladding material installed in a refit just three years ago comes with warnings not to use in high-rise buildings, that the Council out-sourced management company and the outfit doing the work knowingly went ahead in order to save a few thousand pounds (K. & C. is the wealthiest council in the U.K. – with a cash reserve fund close to half a billion dollars).

That there had been serial warnings from the London Fire Brigade authorities and parliamentary committees as well as the residents association about the imminent, high risk of existing practices in thousands of similar public-build blocks around the country (hundreds with the same cladding material have now failed belated inspections). They also lack sprinkler systems, alarms or fire doors, and a mandatory secondary route of egress. (By contrast, all these systems have been legally required in NYC since 1967 – and were de facto norms for decades previous, e.g. the ubiquitous external fire escapes).The Tory government buried them all. That negligent behavior conformed to their boastful commitment to removing burdensome regulations from an unduly constrained economy and society.

Survivors were shut out of a special Council meeting scheduled to plot a strategy for handling the crisis – so, too, the press. When a judge ordered the Council to rescind the ban, it summarily cancelled the meeting. Victims’ relatives and Grenfell residents who escaped the fire also were denied an opportunity to ask questions in person at a coroner’s hearing. Council member and official spokesperson Catherine Faulks told a BBC interviewer that the press demand was just a “stunt,” and that the residents clamoring to attend were professional agitators rather than Grenfell victims.

This past Wednesday, the Council’s abject incompetence was officially confirmed when the Westminster government announced that key services will be taken over by a specialist “taskforce” made up of outside experts. Phased in gradually, this privitization of public services will not be charged to the K. & C.’s burgeoning account. It is not known whether the specialist consultants will include a public relations adviser – perhaps someone recommended by David Cameron from his old firm, Carlton Communications, where he honed his skills.

The deeper, self-evident truth is that the (relative) poor are viewed as a nuisance in the tony precincts of K. & C. Race has added to the distasteful mix. Many residents are of South Asian, Caribbean or African origin – although a large fraction from that background are British born. Those origins were played up in initial coverage. In fact, it seems that about a third are white – most of those Brits. Very few are on ‘welfare;’ many residents have purchased or pay quite high rents for their apartments (up to 2,000 pounds a month). They are ordinary working people. They do stand out in a posh district.

The statements of public officials etch these realities

There is Sir Eric Pickles, Communities and Local Government Secretary under David Cameron, who received the parliamentary group’s urgent appeal in in March 2014: "Surely... when you already have credible evidence to justify updating... the guidance ... which will lead to the saving of lives, you don't need to wait another three years in addition to the two already spent since the research findings were updated, in order to take action?” He did nothing. Interviewed after the Grenfell tragedy, he unashamedly blustered that the government judged it a sounder policy to encourage manufacturers of safe cladding to promote the product more actively rather than go down the dangerous path of imposing state regulation. (No exaggeration).[1]

There is Liberal Democrat Stephen Williams, who was a government minister at the time (a result of Nicholas Clegg leading his party into the fateful Coalition with the Tories), received a warning that “without automatic sprinkler protection, we cannot ….afford to wait for another tragedy to occur to amend this weakness" (referencing a tragic 2015 fire in another tower block). He replied: "I have neither seen nor heard anything that would suggest that consideration of these specific potential changes is urgent and I am not willing to disrupt the work of this department by asking that these matters are brought forward."

There is the failure to make any acknowledgement of the Tories’ 40% cuts to local authorities since 2010.

There is David Cameron who pronounced just last week that those accusing the government of misplaced austerity budgets are “selfish” – unlike the rich and the corporate interests who at the same time have received substantial tax reductions and the financial wheeler-dealers who are welcomed to Britain’s ‘off-shore’ accommodating environment.

There is Sir Martin Moore-Bick,[2] the former High Court Judge, who has been appointed by May to head a board of inquiry. Fears of a protracted inquiry producing an anodyne report were aroused when Moore-Bick went out of his way to declare that the scope of the investigation would be severely limited to determining the immediate cause of the fire and why it spread so rapidly. Answers to both questions already are known. The point of origination was a Hotpoint refrigerator that apparently shorted; the rapid spread was due to the combustible cladding facilitated by the lack of sprinklers, fire doors, etc.

So a narrowly drawn inquiry should last less than a week. Even a glacial board of inquiry should be able to figure out in a few days time who in the apartment left the door of the fridge open overnight. The many months foreseen are simply time to allow the public outrage to die down and plans made as to how far the cover-up should extend. Moore-Bick seems well suited to the task. He was the magistrate in a controversial case wherein he determined that is was entirely fair and proper that a displaced recipient of social assistance (handicapped) should be housed 60 miles from her previous residence, family, doctors and friends. She was black. His ruling was overturned by an appeals court judge who found his reasoning without merit.

The Sir Inquisitor-to-be has given the game away in adding that “I do not expect everyone to be pleased by the conclusion of the inquiry” - yet to begin. Moore-Bick’s unprompted utterance shows just how pervasive is the Americanization of British political culture. Unnecessary, embarrassing ejaculations like this have become impulsive – defying the dictates of prudent restraint.

No one is confused as to who the “everyone” he has in mind refers to. An impression reinforced by the denial of the residents’ right to ask questions in person as to the scope and form of the inquiry. The only open question is the exact tint that the whitewash will take (stitch-up in British dialect).

The first testimony will not be heard until mid-September when panel members, as yet unnamed, get back from their holidays.

Then, there is the K. & C. Tory Council – about which there is nothing at all to say in the way of excuse or amelioration. Two weeks after the immolation, the Council was still withdrawing rental checks from the residents’ bank accounts – living or dead. Ms Faulks told an interviewer that this was a “tiny” matter undeserving of attention. All the aggrieved party had to do was file an appeal either in person or on the Internet. Evidently, she is a devout believer in the afterlife.

This is an ugly picture. Why focus a sharp light on it – especially by a foreigner. There are two reasons. First, this phenomena of unspeakable social callousness, undergirded by doctrines aggressively and successfully promoted across the Western world, is becoming pervasive. In addition, the Grenfell affair demonstrates that the United States is not alone in its tolerance for actions that should be a national disgrace but are slighted by a political class incapable of feeling shame.

The callous, off-hand treatment given the Grenfell victims is reminiscent of how colonial administrators dealt with expendable natives. If a proper criminal process were undertaken, a reasonable verdict would be Involuntary Manslaughter. Criminal negligence could be another charge both for the calculated failure to act on warnings of mortal risk – and for any harm as might be caused survivors of the fire who have been denied appropriate care.

[1] This is an exact replica of the attitude taken by the yahoos who rule the state of Texas in the wake of the catastrophic explosion of a fertilizer plant in 2013 (killing 35 and destroying an entire section of the town of West). The company’s practices had violated already weak rules and no inspection had taken place for years. The Republican governor and legislature rejected calls for a tightening of regulation in arguing that the far greater danger to public welfare (Freedom and liberty) was setting a precedent that could favor a more active government role in regulation generally.

[2]Hyphenated names are fairly common in England. They formerly were limited to aristocratic families. They conveyed nobility of lineage and character. These days, quite common, one-syllable names are hyphenated. Example: Moore-Bick. Doubtless, we soon will be reading references to a Cecil Smith-Jones or a Neville Black-White. This plebian turn began with Mandy Rice-Davies, the partner in cabinetmaking of the famous Christine Keeler who was implicated in the notorious Profumo affair half a century ago. Coincidentally, rumors were circulating in Whitehall just last year that Keeler’s posthumous autobiography was about to be published bearing the title My Three Years Under the Tories. That has proven apocryphal.

Gaullism conception as a French political stance is based on the pivotal thoughts and opinions of General Charles de Gaulle who was the leader of World War II French Resistance. Since the beginning of World War II, he had been the carrier (to be exact a founder) of the ideas of Gaullism which mainly concerned on the French standpoint and thoughts and implemented his conception in his foreign policy amid his presidency of the Fifth French Republic.

According to the Serge Berstein’s point of view, Gaullism cannot be considered as either a doctrine or a political ideology and is not inclined to whether left or right. However, according to some policymakers, Gaullism stems from the specific thoughts, mainly the pragmatic approach of General Charles de Gaulle to particularly historical circumstances. As a result, the Gaullist idea is chiefly based on the historical progression of the ideas, and also a pragmatic observation of the power. Gaullism is a peculiarly French phenomenon and that engendered its pivotal seeds in French Foreign Policy amid the Fifth French Republic.

One of the main scholars, Lawrence D. Kritzman who is an American scholar, points out that Gaullism can be characterized as a special form of French patriotism and also it carries out the seeds of French nationalism. Gaullism is the political verification of French national sovereignty and unity of French people which is completely against to the divisiveness of the country. Within these circumstances, one question rises concerning the foundation of the Gaullist ideas. The idea of Gaullism has developed in different stages and can be classified in three main development phases.

The historical progress of the idea of Gaulism in different years is composed of three stages.

The first phase of the development includes the periods of between 1940 and 1945 related to the World War II. During those periods, Gaullism was identified with the idea of the rejection of joint allies with Nazi Germany and the Vichy government run by Phillipe Petain and force people to take jointly decisive missions and actions with General Charles de Gaulle and Free French Forces to resist against Nazi Germany on the Allied side.

The second phase relates to the periods from 1946 to 1958. Amid those period, the idea of gaullism had taken toe opposed stances against the Fourth French Republic which caused the unstable condition in the Parliamentary Government. Therefore, it was needed to take a radical change on the governmental structure concerning the replacement of Parliamentary Republic with a Presidential Republic with preeminent constitutional powers.

In the third phase during the periods of 1958-1969, Gaullism was only about the own stances and political actions of General de Gaulle in French Foreign Policy. Upon he returned to power in 1958, he served as a President of the newly forme Fifth republic from 1959 until his resignation in 1969. During that period, General de Gaulle officially verified the idea of Gaullism in his stances and actions during his presidency. It was an idea of the soverign state, the unity of people, nationalism, and patriotism. Hence, since the period of 1969, Gaullism is used to describe those identified as heirs to de Gaulle's ideas.

The primary principles of the Gaullism concern on the certain idea of France as a strong state. The main idea of a strong state originates from General de Gaulle’s ”War Memoirs” in which he describes France as an indomitable (courageous) entity or a person. According to the American scholar Kritzman, the Gaullist idea in France set out to reestablish the honor of the nation and also affirm its independence. In his idea of Gaullism, General de Gaulle was mainly most admired by political figures including Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonapart, and Georges Clemenceau.

The idea of Gaullism or exact meaning of Gaullism is classified in varied dictionaries with different meanings. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the idea of Gaullism originated in the 1940s and means ”the principles and policies of Charles de Gaulle, characterized by their conservatism, nationalism, and advocacy of centralized government”. Collins dictionary defines the meaning of Gaullism in two different meanings according to British English. First meaning is about ”the conservative French nationalist policies and principles associated with General Charles de Gaulle”, the second meaning relates to ”a political movement founded on and supporting General de Gaulle's principles and policies”.

However, the Gaullism signifies the different meaning in American English in conjunction with Collins dictionary, which consider the idea as ”the political policies of Charles de Gaulle, characterized by extreme nationalism”. By the same token, Merriam Webster dictionary established in 1828, gives another explanation of Gaullism meaning that it is “a French political movement during World War II led by Charles de Gaulle in opposition to the Vichy regime or a postwar French political movement led by Charles de Gaulle established offically in 1943”.

The successors of the Gaullism ideas, who are called Gaullists mention the need for a strong economy and a stable society. They also take into account the idea of national interests, which mainly relates to the paradigm of realism. Realists more elaborate on the power of the state and see it as an only major actor of international relations and also refer to the idea of national interests or interests of the nation-state. Therefore, as realists, Gaullists also take these ideas as the main principles of Gaullism. The Gaullist economic policy is based on the idea of dirigisme considering state stewardship of the economy. At the same time, as a backbone of a strong state, De Gaulle also supported the idea of creating state institutions within a strong executive and administrative power. However, De Gaulle and its successors, mainly Gaullists, did not support Europe as a supranational entity, instead, they were in favor of European integration within the form of a confederation of sovereign states, and envisaged the idea of common foreign policy, being autonomous from the superpowers, and significantly influenced by France. Over the historical course, De Gaulle’s political thoughts and ideas recognized as a Gaullism has been dominant in France. His successors as president, Georges Pompidou implemented these idea during his presidency in France from 1969 to 1974. The same politically Gaullist policy also were consolidated by his president successor socialist Francois Mitterrand between the period of 1981 and 1995 amid his presidency. However, his ideas weakened in the 1980s. Since that time, there have been several periods of cohabitation, in which the president and prime minister have been from different parties, and took a radical shift from the imperial presidency of the Gaulle. The ”Dirigisme” concept of economy of General de Gaulle also gradually lost its position due to the privatization of many state assets in France. In conclusion, the Gaullism as a General De Gaulle’s legacy, has been the backbone of the reverification of unity of nation-state, society and patriotism in France.

The future of EU-Russia relations is even more uncertain than ever before. Everyman may observe only deterioration. Mass media broadly covered the extension of the bloc's economic sanctions against Russia by six months until January 31. European Union leaders made such decision on June, 22 during a two-day summit in Brussels. This step followed the Washington's decision to broaden its sanctions against Moscow.

But this is only a visible part of world politics based on the clear desire to punish Russia for annexation of Crimea. The US and European politics continue to consider the sanctions the only effective mechanism to influence Kremlin. Though there is no great success. Sanction cause counter-sanctions and so on and so forth. May be it is high time to try other tools of international diplomacy? Where are talented diplomats who could reverse the situation and prevent further confrontation? It is absolutely urgent because it turned out that Europe punishes not only Moscow but itself.

The most complicated and demonstrative situation is in energy sector. After a decline in gas consumption in 2001-2014, Europe has begun to consume more. For example, last year, the EU consumed 447bn c m, of which 34% was Russian gas. The demand is expected to go even higher because in the next decade, Europe will run short of its gas reserves. Nothing to do, Europe has to cooperate with Russia and try to find the consensus.

The US has its own opinion on this matter. The US also offer gas to Europe. Washington and Moscow are real rivals in the gas supplies to the European states. Some European leaders are even sure the senators were pursuing US economic interests at Europe's expense. This fact proves the Senate bill that says "The United States government should prioritize the export of United States energy resources in order to create American jobs, help United States…, and strengthen United States foreign policy."

That seems aimed against Nord Stream 2, the proposed Russian pipeline across the Baltic Sea to Germany, bypassing Ukraine. Investors in Nord Stream 2 include five major European companies: Anglo-Dutch Shell and Austrian OMV, German Uniper and Wintershall, French ENGIE. It expected to be very profitable for the states participated in the project. But the US considers it a threat to its own economic interest and successfully uses political background in order to oppose the realization of the commercial project.

Though the US is increasing its liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity, it's not clear whether the price of US gas will be lower than that of the Russian pipeline gas, supplied by Russian Gazprom. At this point, large-scale US LNG exports to Europe appear to be a money-losing enterprise aimed at gaining market share. There is nothing common with politics.

Nowadays Europe should clearly defend its interests and be able to distinguish the real politics from private business interests. It is obvious that the US forces Europe to harden sanctions against Russia and Russian energy sector not because of the Ukraine or Crimea, but because of own economic interests. It is not clear why Europe should be committed to American economic interests and continue political confrontation with an economically more profitable partner under the cover of imposed political motives.